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Globalization and Beauty: A Historical and Firm Perspective

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EURAMERICA Vol. 41, No. 4 (December 2011), 885-916
© Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica
http://euramerica.org

Globalization and Beauty:

A Historical and Firm Perspective*
TP PT P

Geoffrey Jones
Harvard Business School, Harvard University
Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163, USA
E-mail: gjones@hbs.edu

Abstract
This paper uses the beauty industry to explore the impact of
globalization over the very long run. When the first wave of
modern globalization struck in the nineteenth century, a homo-
genization of global beauty ideals began—one which has, to some
extent, continued until the present day. This has had enormous
societal and cultural consequences, and business enterprises are
at the heart of this process. The paper explores how
entrepreneurs and firms translated societal values into brands,
globalized them, and changed societal perceptions of beauty as
a result. It also shows the limitations of the homogenization
achieved by firms even at the high point of globalization,
before making the case that contemporary globalization is
working to facilitate greater diversity in beauty ideals again.

Key Words: Beauty, globalization, culture

TPInvited article, Received July 14, 2011

Proofreaders: Jeffrey Cuvilier, Kuei-feng Hu, Hsueh-mei Chen, Ying-bei Wang
* This article builds on, and develops, arguments presented originally in Jones (2010a).
Documents were consulted in the following archives: records of Avon held at the
Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware; the records of J. Walter
Thompson held by the History of Advertising Trust, Norwich, Britain; the records of
Procter & Gamble held in Procter & Gamble corporate archives, Cincinnati; records of
Unilever NV held in Unilever Archives, Rotterdam.
886 EURAMERICA

I. Overview
This paper uses the beauty industry to explore the impact of
globalization over the very long run. Beauty may seem an odd choice
as the industry rarely features in the management literature. Yet the
industry is large, with global sales now in excess of $330 billion.1 This
makes it one of the largest of the so-called creative industries; by
comparison, the size of the global fashion market has revenues of
around $100 billion, and the global advertising industry has revenues
of around $430 billion (Caves, 2000; Friedman & Jones, 2011: 237).
Moreover, the beauty industry sells products which (for better or
worse) impact an issue which has effects for all individuals—the
perception of attractiveness. As recent research has demonstrated,
there is a “beauty premium” which enables those considered more
attractive to earn higher incomes, get acquitted more often in jury
trials, earn higher student evaluations, and benefit in other ways
(Cipriani & Zago, 2011; Hamermesh & Biddle, 1994; Mobius &
Rosenblat, 2006; Mocan & Tekin, 2010). Insofar as the globalization
of the beauty industry involved the globalization of what was
considered to be attractive, the societal, cultural and individual impact
was profound.
The modern beauty industry, involving factory production and
the marketing of brands, originated in nineteenth century Europe and
North America as a very local activity drawing on long-established
craft traditions and beauty rituals. The use of beauty products
themselves certainly did not originate in the nineteenth century.
Indeed, for thousands of years, every known human civilization has
used beauty aids of one kind or another, lending support to the view
that the use of cosmetic artifices rested ultimately on biological
imperatives to attract and to reproduce (Gunn, 1973; Jones, 2010a;

1
The definition of the beauty industry used in this article includes fragrances, hair
and skin care products, color cosmetics, bath and shower products, oral care, and
baby care. It does not include services such as salons and hairdressers, medical
products and surgery such as Botox and plastic surgery, or fashion.
 Globalization and Beauty 887

Le Guérer, 2005; Morris, 1984; Subbarayappa, 1999; Wang, 2000).

In most past societies, however, access to beauty products was largely
restricted to elites who had sufficient leisure and income. During the
nineteenth century, industrialization made it possible to manufacture
products in larger volumes, often more cheaply; transport
improvements enabled entrepreneurs to seek markets beyond their
immediate locality, and so prompted the emergence of brands; and
rising incomes, initially in towns, enabled larger numbers of people to
engage in discretionary spending, including on beauty products.
The growth of the new beauty industry was initially modest
rather than dramatic. Moral objections to the use of color cosmetics
lingered in many Western societies, especially outside major cities,
until well into the twentieth century. Limited access to piped water
and indoor plumbing restricted the demand for toiletries such as soap
and toothpaste, again into the twentieth century, even in affluent
Western countries. It has been estimated that only one-fifth of
Americans used toiletries or cosmetics in 1916 (Peiss, 1998: 50).
There remain major uncertainties concerning the history of the
subsequent growth of the global beauty industry. The reason being
that few countries, except the United States and Japan, collected
statistical data on the industry—such products were often included in
other categories, especially that of soap and detergents. Figure 1,
which provides an estimate of the growth of the industry in today’s
U.S. dollars between 1913 and 2008, is thus best seen as a rough
approximation.
Despite uncertainties concerning the numbers, however, Figure 1
offers what seems to be a broadly accurate view of the expanding
world market for beauty products in real terms. The market was
initially dominated by the rich Western countries in Europe and the
United States, although in other markets there is every reason to
assume beauty products were being made at home and in the informal
sector. During the 1920s, production and consumption soared in the
affluent United States, and there is good evidence that elites in large
Latin American and Asian cities, such as Buenos Aires, Tokyo and
Shanghai, also became significant consumers. In 1950, as Europe and
888 EURAMERICA

Figure 1 Estimated Growth of the Global Beauty Market 1913-20081

(in 2008 U.S. dollars)

Source: Jones (2010a: 366-367).

Notes: 1. The 1913-1976 figures are for production. The 2008 figure is for retail sales.
2. BRICS=Brazil, Russia, India and China.

most of Asia slowly recovered from the destruction of World War II,
the United States may have accounted for over half of the world
market, but the Japanese market grew rapidly thereafter, become the
world’s second largest after the United States by 1976.
During recent decades, the growth in sales of beauty products in
emerging and transition markets has been phenomenal. In the 1980s,
the beauty market in China was nearly non-existent, as the regime
suppressed cosmetics production, while consumers in the Soviet Union
could only access the products made by the central planning regime.
Today, the situation is different, with Brazil, China, Russia and
India—the so-called BRIC economies—now constituting the world’s
third, fourth, eighth and fourteenth largest markets for beauty
products. Collectively, they account for almost one-fifth of the entire
world market.
With this broad picture of the evolution of the world industry in
mind, the paper proceeds chronologically, examining the international
growth of the industry from the nineteenth century, with a focus on
the products and beauty ideals promoted.
 Globalization and Beauty 889

II. Beauty and the First Wave of Globalization

The growth of the world beauty market was closely linked to the
waves of globalization which began in the nineteenth century.
Business enterprises were at the heart of the building of what is now
called the first global economy. From the mid-nineteenth century,
thousands of firms, primarily based in the Western countries which
had experienced their own industrial revolutions crossed borders and
established operations in foreign countries. These firms drove the
rapid increase in trade flows and built most of the infrastructure of the
global economy, including telegraph and railroad lines, and ports.
Given the absence of appropriate infrastructure in many countries,
foreign enterprises frequently not only introduced technologies
specific to their activities, but also social technologies such as police,
postal and education systems. Between the late nineteenth century and
1914, Western firms provided the residents of most of the world’s
cities with access to electricity, in their homes or at work, as well as in
the form of street lighting. By 1914, world FDI was equivalent to nine
percent of world output, a ratio which was not to be reached again
until the 1990s (Jones, 2005a).
The first modern manufacturing multinationals—firms like
Siemens and Singer—also began building factories in foreign countries
during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. For example, by
1914, Singer had taken the sewing machine around the world and
accounted for upwards of 90 percent of such machines in use
worldwide. In comparison with such industrial giants, beauty firms
were minuscule entrepreneurial enterprises, but it is striking how
many of those first generation beauty entrepreneurs committed to
selling their brands in foreign countries. This commitment rested,
ultimately, on a perception of the universality of beauty in human
societies, as well as the international ambitions of the entrepreneurs
themselves. Born in an age in which international travel and
communications were much easier than ever before, many pioneering
entrepreneurs in nineteenth century also started businesses in
890 EURAMERICA

countries other than their birthplaces. These included such iconic

figures in the American cosmetics industry as Elizabeth Arden, Max
Factor and Helena Rubinstein.
Both French and British perfume houses, for example, built large
export businesses by the middle of the nineteenth century. Parisian
and London perfume houses, such as Piver, Guerlain and Rimmel,
opened retail shops in foreign countries to sell their brands. French
perfume houses, led by the pioneering Grasse firm of Chiris, began a
worldwide search for new flowers and plants, which started to
transform the range of scents available to perfumer (Jones, 2010a:
22-24, 34). As a market emerged for mass produced and mass
marketed brand name soaps during the second half of the century,
leading British and American firms such as Lever Brothers and Procter
& Gamble (P&G) energetically joined the pursuit for international
markets.
While perfume and soap were at the forefront of globalizing
beauty, firms making smaller emergent product categories also sought
international markets. In skin care, the American firms Pond’s and
Chesebrough both developed strong international markets for their
mass skin creams. At a higher price point, Polish-born Helena
Rubinstein built a network of beauty salons selling her creams in
Melbourne, London and Paris prior to 1914. She moved to New York
following the outbreak of World War I, where she began to develop
another business (Jones, 2010a). In another, as yet small, product
category, hair dyes, Eugène Schueller invented the first safe synthetic
hair color formula in Paris in 1907, which provided the basis for a
new company: L’Oréal. Within a decade, the still-small company was
selling its hair dyes in neighboring countries (Jones, 2010a: 49-50).
As firms advertized their brands, there were frequent assertions of
the universality of beauty. The German fragrance house Muehlens,
which was very active internationally, proclaimed in an advertisement
for its perfumed soap in the United States in 1897 that its virtues were
“upheld by beautiful women everywhere.” An advert by the leading
Swedish toothpaste manufacturer Barnängens maintained that “Men
around the world use Vademecum” (Jones, 2010a: 35). Yet brands,
 Globalization and Beauty 891

and their emotional associations, were not value free. They carried
with them strong assumptions from the societies and countries in
which they emerged concerning what it meant to be “beautiful.”
Before these and other Western firms began exporting, beauty
had always been a craft which was very local in its products and
traditions. There was no global standard of what it meant to be
beautiful. Societies had always varied considerably, both over time and
between geographies, in how they sought to enhance their
attractiveness through the use of cosmetic aids, hairstyles, and clothing,
and in their broader views of aesthetics. Both males and females, for
example, have made extensive use of cosmetics in certain contexts.
Indeed, in some societies it was the male body, rather than the female,
which was held to represent the ideal beauty. As Western culture and
influence expanded during the nineteenth century, Europeans and
Americans became increasingly curious about, if not respectful of, the
rest of the world, writing in scientific journals about the apparent
differences in beauty ideals (Anonymous, 1851). In 1871, Charles
Darwin confidently asserted in his book The Descent of Man that, “[i]t
is certainly not true that there is in the mind of man any universal
standard of beauty with respect to the human body” (Darwin, 1871:
353).
The international growth of the beauty industry soon challenged
Darwin’s view, and drove a worldwide homogenization of beauty
ideals. Beauty ideals, assumptions and routines prevalent in the West
spread as global benchmarks. These ideals included the aspirational
status of Paris as the capital of fashion and beauty, reflecting France’s
established reputation for refined luxury, which was greatly
strengthened by the development of haute couture during the middle
decades of the century. As the French perfume industry grew rapidly
through technological and marketing innovations, its firms linked
their products firmly to this prestigious world of fashion (Briot, 2011;
Jones, 2010a: 26-27). One of the peculiarities of the emergent global
economy was that country, or city, of origin assumed an ever-greater
importance as an indication of quality and prestige. In the case of
892 EURAMERICA

beauty, France, and in particular Paris, became the symbolic capital,

joined much later by New York.
Beauty also came to mean white. Although before the nineteenth
century, Western people, with their long-established hostility to
bathing, had stunk, and were probably the dirtiest societies on earth,
by the end of that century Western soap brands confidently associated
cleanliness with “whiteness.” Crude racial stereotypes were used to
advertise soap and other toiletries, which were presented as
components of the Western contribution to “civilizing” colonized
peoples (Burke, 1996: 17-34). The British and U.S. mass marketers of
soap regularly claimed that using their soap would whiten the skin of
people of color, thereby “civilizing” them (McClintock, 1995:
207-231; Sivulka, 2001: 98-106). Strikingly, however, even the
advertisements of traditional Greek soap firms proclaimed that they
were capable of “turning even a negro white” (Sifneos, 2002: 71).
The underlying assumptions of the beauty industry concerning
ethnicity were most strikingly seen in the United States, where
African-Americans represented over one-tenth of the population
before World War I, but where the commercial beauty industry made
no provision for their distinctive hair texture or skin tones. The
mainstream beauty industry did not cater to this market because it was
impossible to imagine non-whites as beautiful. This provided an
entrepreneurial opportunity for African-American entrepreneurs, such
as Annie Turnbo Malone and Madam C. J. Walker, who built large
businesses concerned with the treatment of African-American hair,
which is often tightly coiled. Whether because of a desire to look
more like white people or because of a desire to make their hair more
“manageable,” products to “straighten” African hair became a fertile
area for African-American entrepreneurs (Peiss, 1998: 67-70).
Beauty companies need to be seen as interpreters, rather than
creators, of the ethnic and cultural assumptions in their societies. It
was hardly surprising that at the high point of Western imperialism,
white skin was considered superior, along with everything else in
Western civilization. However, adroit marketing and branding
strategies reinforced and diffused such values. Business enterprises
 Globalization and Beauty 893

diffused the underlying assumptions behind their brands—they did

not originate them—but their role was nonetheless an important
driver of the globalization of beauty ideals.
As Western beauty standards were globalized, non-Western
countries, local ideals and practices retreated, albeit at different rates
and to different extents. This shift was achieved not by force of arms,
but by shaping aspirations. Nineteenth century Japan provides one
example. After Japan was forced to open its doors to trade with the
West, the modernizing Meiji government actively sought to change
the cultural face of the Japanese people by banning traditional
practices such as tooth blackening, eyebrow shaving, and male use of
cosmetics (Ashikari, 2003). Although the Japanese government sought
to avoid Western colonization, and facilitated the creation of
indigenous firms to compete with Western firms in industries such as
shipping and banking, it took the lead in imposing more Western
beauty ideals on its own people. When Japanese-owned beauty
companies such as Shiseido and Lion emerged towards the end of the
century, they looked to France and the United States for products and
brand names (Jones, 2010a: 61-62).
The momentum towards homogenization continued after 1914.
The international spread and appeal of Hollywood created a powerful
new driver. During World War I, the American movie industry pulled
ahead of the French, which had initially dominated the cinema
industry. By the 1920s, the industry was concentrated in southern
California and able to benefit from the size of its home market and
control of distribution networks to dominate both the American
market and international markets (Bakker, 2008). Movie theatres
reached almost every American town, diffusing new lifestyles and
creating a new celebrity culture around stars—that shaped perceptions
of beauty, especially female beauty (Banner, 1983: 283).
Beauty companies formed part of the eco-system of Hollywood
and celebrity. The firm of Max Factor, based in Los Angeles,
innovated in cosmetics for the needs of actors and actresses, and then
commercialized those innovations, first in the United States, and then
elsewhere (Basten, 2008: 46). In 1925, Lever Brothers launched the
894 EURAMERICA

perfumed Lux bar toilet soap, which grew after a 1928 advertizing
campaign asserting that nearly 100 percent of Hollywood screen stars
used the brand. The association with the celebrities of the expanding
film industry was reinforced by testimonials from actresses and
directors (Reichert, 2003: 118-119; Scott, 2005: 184-186). Hollywood
was a thoroughly capitalist enterprise, and heavily dependent on
export markets, so there was no narrow definition of beauty. By the
1930s, the Hollywood studios were active recruiting actors and
actresses from all over Europe and Latin America, both to make their
films seem exotic and to enhance their international appeal. Female
actresses were permitted a wide range of skin tone and hair color, but
diversity had strict boundaries—African-Americans and Asians did not
appear on screen (Berry, 2000).

III. The Beauty Industry and De-Globalization

World War I began the disintegration of the first global economy:
The international monetary system collapsed; countries expropriated
the assets and intellectual property of firms based in enemy countries;
ethnic and racial tensions rose, resulting in the emergence of
draconian and racist immigration laws in the United States and
elsewhere. The Great Depression finished the process of disintegration,
and by the 1930s, trade barriers and exchange controls had lowered
levels of market integration to those previously seen in the early
nineteenth century.
Yet despite the efforts of politicians, the international consumer
culture survived the rampant political and economic nationalism of
these years (De Grazia, 2005). Hollywood movies were still shown in
Nazi Germany, in part because most studios declined to criticize such
repressive regimes and risk losing access to important markets.
Companies such as Max Factor and Unilever were closely associated
with, and benefitted from, the globalization of Hollywood through
their use of celebrities to endorse their brands. The momentum
towards globalization was encouraged by the multinational strategies
 Globalization and Beauty 895

of such leading firms. In the more expensive product categories, the

fragrance house Coty and cosmetics companies such as Elizabeth
Arden and Helena Rubenstein, built businesses on both sides of the
Atlantic in the interwar years, and sometimes in prosperous cities
elsewhere, especially Latin America. The sellers of mass market creams
and toiletries, such as Pond’s and Unilever, expanded their exports
and even manufacturing to parts of Asia and Latin America (Jones,
2010a: 97-150).
After World War II, the Western world and Japan resumed trade
and investment, and growth soared. Yet much of the world had opted
out of global capitalism. The Communist world, which now included
the People’s Republic of China as well as the Soviet Union and its
satellites, was almost entirely closed to capitalism. Much of the rest of
the non-Western world first freed itself from colonial rule, and then
erected formidable barriers, import and otherwise, to foreign firms as
they sought to modernize and grow their economies. By 1980, world
FDI was the equivalent to a mere 4.8 percent of world output—a far
lower share than in 1914.
The beauty industry continued to internationalize where it was
permitted to invest. After 1945, industry growth was aided by new
and powerful diffusers of a Western-orchestrated international beauty
culture and television reinforced the impact of Hollywood’s role in
diffusing Western, especially American, ideals in terms of lifestyle,
fashion, and beauty. The United States became a major source of
television programming for other countries, with programs dubbed or
subtitled into local languages. Television was also important in turning
beauty pageants, which existed well before World War II, into
international media events: A British-based Miss World pageant was
launched in 1951; a U.S.-based Miss Universe followed in 1952. Both
pageants were televised in many countries and feminine grooming
became a media spectacle that set expectations and defined aspirations
(Gundle, 2008: 257-258). At a global level, the paler skins and wider
eyes favored in both these contests for the first few decades
represented what has been termed a “Miss Universe standard of
beauty” (Van Esterik, 1996: 215).
896 EURAMERICA

There were new international distribution channels, too, after

World War II. The first duty-free shop opened at Shannon Airport
in Ireland, in 1946, to cater for trans-Atlantic passengers who had
to disembark at the airport while their planes refueled. The first
duty-free counter at London’s Heathrow Airport appeared in 1959.
As air travel expanded, duty-free retail grew, especially in Europe
and Asia. Travel retail provided an important means of growing
the market for more expensive fragrances, cosmetics and skin care
because it exposed many new potential customers, including male
international business travelers, to brands for the first time, and at
tax-free prices. Overcoming consumers’ reluctance to buy
internationally, rather than locally, marketing beauty products
became easier as consumers themselves became more international
(Jones, 2010a: 209-210).
In the postwar period, consumers could buy the same
brands in many markets. By 1971, Max Factor was
manufacturing in eight foreign countries and being sold in 143
(Anonymous, n.d.a). Prestige perfume brands, such as Chanel or
Guerlain, were widely sold in developed countries and available
to the elites of non-Western developing countries. Companies
such as Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive sold their soap,
toothpaste and shampoo brands on five continents. Above all,
aspirations had been globalized. Beauty and even hygiene was
associated with Western white ethnicity, and with certain
locales, notably Paris and New York.

IV. Homogenization Constrained

Although this paper has so far emphasized the role of the beauty
industry in homogenizing beauty ideals, it is important to introduce a
note of caution. At no point were globalization and homogenization
entirely identical processes. As firms invested internationally, they
shaped markets by transferring brands and products, but they also had
to respond to those new markets. The ability of firms to dictate was
 Globalization and Beauty 897

constrained by their need to be profitable, and in a consumer products

industry, profits came by offering things consumers wanted to buy.
Corporate advertising and marketing could certainly shape consumer
preferences, but they were also shaped by inherited cultural and social
norms which proved very resilient, even as globalization gathered
pace.
As firms expanded internationally, they quickly learned that
markets differed in their tastes and preferences. As the French
fragrance company Coty sought to grow a U.S. business in the decade
before World War I, for example, the firm identified that cosmetics
and face powders represented a greater opportunity than perfumes,
and built a business based on them (Jones, 2010a: 37). It was to
become a familiar story in the industry—firms needed to make their
products relevant to local consumers. Despite the spread of an
international consumer culture, the markets for consumer products,
whether those were movies or laundry soap, continued to exhibit local
preferences reflective of inherited social and cultural values, linguistic
differences, different climatic conditions and culinary traditions,
differences in distribution systems, variations in political systems, and
many other factors. The beauty industry, which sold deeply personal
products that were applied to the body and affected personal
confidence, was an unlikely candidate for homogenization . . . and so
it proved.
The challenge of making international brands locally relevant was
complex, and firms adopted different strategies. As a general rule,
companies which sold premium and luxury brands sought to minimize
local adaptation: They were essentially in the business of selling global
aspirations associated with Paris, or later New York, to people who
travelled. This meant that any adaption needed for local relevance had
to be subtle, as consumers were to associate the product with Paris,
not Detroit or Rotterdam. Premium brands which went very local,
such as Coty in the U.S. in the 1920s, risked diluting the appeal of
their brands, and were often penalized. Coty’s American business, for
example, collapsed dramatically after the onset of the Great
Depression (Jones, 2010a: 110).
898 EURAMERICA

Armand Petitjean, the Belgian who founded Lancôme in Paris in

1935, experimented with a more subtle solution to seeking global
relevance. He launched five fragrances sold in elegant bottles created
by a renowned artist. The defining idea was to create a separate scent
for women from each of the five continents by building an association
between each scent and the flowers, spices, and cultural identity of
each part of the world. A true beauty brand, Petitjean argued, had to
be relevant to women everywhere (Jones, 2010a: 128). It was an
intriguing idea, which successfully launched his new brand, but did
not provide a general solution to the dilemma facing prestige brands as
they went global. Too much local adaption continued to decimate even
the most iconic brands. Strong brand equities, such as Chanel N° 5,
could be, and were, eroded by poor marketing. Despite an iconic
Catherine Deneuve advertising campaign for Chanel N° 5, aimed
exclusively at the American market between 1968 and 1978, the
brand was badly tarnished in the United States when it became
available for sale through drug stores (Anonymous, 2003).
In contrast, as mass brands were internationalized in the interwar
decades, they generally engaged in greater customization, both in their
formulation and marketing. Strikingly, toiletry companies such as
Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever used local celebrities rather than
Hollywood stars in their advertisements for mass-marketed products.
In interwar China and India, in particular, Western firms seem
especially willing to use local celebrities and advertizing images when
selling mass brands such as Pond’s, Nivea and Lux, even though
Hollywood celebrities were well-known in those markets (Jones,
2010a: 147).
Such localization reflected the substantial regional and
national differences which persisted even in neighboring developed
countries for the consumption of beauty products. There were, and
remain, especially large variations between countries in the use of
fragrances and scent preferences. French use of fragrances, for
example, remained unusually high for a developed Western
country. There was also a strong preference for prestige fragrances,
and as a result the mass market segment was smaller than
 Globalization and Beauty 899

elsewhere in postwar Europe, and especially the United States.

During the 1970s, over a quarter of the entire French beauty
market was fragrances compared to eight percent in Germany, and
French per capita consumption was twice that of Britain and
Germany. In contrast, in the United States, in the mid-1950s,
fragrances still accounted for less than 1 percent of the total beauty
market. In Japan, and East Asia generally, there was little demand
for fragrances, which remains the case today (Anonymous, n.d.b;
Frost & Sullivan, 1972).
Significant differences remained between countries in the use of
color cosmetics and skin care products. American women became
famous for being highly “made-up,” and by the early 1960s an
estimated 86 percent of American girls aged 14 to 17 were using
lipstick. In Europe, overall acceptance of cosmetics remained lower
for much longer. In much of Europe and Japan, skin products were
more important than in the United States. During the 1960s,
three-fifths of the total Japanese beauty market was held by skin
preparations. In Europe, skin products were used much more widely
than color lines, although there were major differences between
countries. In 1963, while 75 percent of German women used skin or
face cream, only 54 percent of French women and 20 percent of
Italians did so. While 73 percent of women in Britain used lipstick and
58 percent of French did so, a mere 25 percent of Italian women
applied the product. On the other hand, Italians made much more use
of eye make-up. “It is a general rule in Western Europe,” one
contemporary study observed, “that either the eyes or the mouth are
emphasized but not both altogether” (Anonymous, n.d.b; Jones,
2010a: 190; Mann, 1968: 2, 54).
There were wide differences between countries even in toiletries.
While shampoo consumption broadly increased with per capita
income, actual consumption varied widely at broadly similar levels. In
the early 1980s, per capita shampoo consumption in Venezuela and
Argentina was three times that of Malaysia and South Africa, despite
broadly similar incomes (Jones, 2008: 154). While the need to be
“clean,” and not to smell, became a social norm across social classes in
900 EURAMERICA

all developed countries and among social elites elsewhere, societies

continued to differ widely in which products they used, and how
frequently they used them. The United States emerged as obsessively
“clean” (Ashenburg, 2007: 275). In Europe, there were regional
differences. Per capita consumption of toilet soap was highest in
northern European countries such as Britain, German and the
Netherlands. In France, Spain and Italy it remained low until the
1960s, when a slow convergence in consumption patterns began
(Anonymous, n.d.c).
These variations in toiletry demand were striking in that these
markets were largely dominated by the same large firms—Colgate-
Palmolive, Henkel, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. Yet these firms
had to adapt to different cultural values, and variations in urbani-
zation levels, access to piped water, and the availability and nature of
washing facilities. Bathing consumed more soap than showering.
Britain had a growing number of installed baths in houses—90 percent
in the early 1970s—but a low proportion of showers—less than
one-fifth of households—whereas the majority of households in
Germany had both baths and showers installed (Anonymous, n.d.c).
Germans had a special preference for bath preparations, with a
particular liking for liquids with foaming properties, and scented with
herbal extracts such as pine. During the 1960s, seven percent of total
German beauty production was represented by this category; no other
country had such a demand for perfumed soap baths and bath salts
(Mann, 1968).
Multinational corporations proved to be unreliable enforcers or
guarantors of homogenization. During the postwar decades, most
firms remained, by later standards, quite fragmented. The name
L’Oréal was not even used by most of its foreign subsidiaries, for
example. The company was named SAIPO in Italy, Golden in Britain,
and Haarkosmetik u. Parfümerie in Germany (Jones, 2005b: 38-42).
It was common for the same product to be given different brand
names in different countries. Companies marketed multiple brands
under different brand names in different countries. Even the most
“global” beauty brand was in practice typically very “local.” It was the
 Globalization and Beauty 901

norm rather than the exception for brand positioning to vary between
countries. In part, this reflected tensions and rivalries within large
business organizations. Local managers frequently exaggerated the
need for local adaptations, sometimes simply to defend their own turf,
but often also because their understanding of the market gave them a
greater understanding of what would be successful in their own area.
However, there were wide variations in this regard between
firms, and even inside firms. Many of Unilever’s large number of
international brands in the postwar decades lacked consistent
positioning or formulation, although it had more success
maintaining consistency across countries in several large toiletry
brands than in its much larger detergents and foods businesses. Lux
toilet soap, which was sold on five continents by 1960 and was the
largest-selling toilet bar soap, was marketed worldwide with a
consistent brand positioning as the “soap of the stars” (Jones,
2005b: 142-146, 165-166). In an unusual reversal, it was the
highly centralized P & G that experienced the most problems with
the less-widely sold Camay bar soap. The former head of their
export division later observed how P & G during the postwar
decades “kept going from right to left on Camay . . . I did not
recognize the Camay in Australia or in Germany because they were
different” (Anonymous, 1988: 3-6; Anonymous, n.d.d).
However, even in cases when brand positioning was consistent,
such as Unilever’s Lux toilet soap, product formulation was usually
adapted to local conditions. This was often required by government
regulations as well as the cost and availability of raw materials, let
alone local consumer preferences for scents, colors, and other features.
The upshot was that the same brand and product often looked and
smelt very differently in different countries.
Wide differences between countries in their retail distribution
systems provided both a major barrier to globalization and a
constraint on homogenization, as retailers and sales channels had
important voices on what was sold. In Europe, Italy and Britain were
at opposite extremes. In postwar Italy, the market was fragmented
with the majority of outlets, most of which were individually owned:
902 EURAMERICA

small perfumeries, hairdressing salons, pharmacies and grocery shops.

While perfumeries accounted for over one-third of the outlets for
cosmetics and toiletries around 1980, there were few department
stores or supermarkets. In Britain at the same time, there were few
perfumery shops, but supermarkets accounted for one-quarter of
cosmetics and toiletries outlets, and pharmacies almost a half, of
which the Boots chain of over 1,100 retail pharmacies accounted for
30 percent. In Germany, specialist drug stores rather than pharmacies
accounted for 35 percent of the market, and supermarkets only 11
percent. For much of the postwar period prestige cosmetics was sold
exclusively through drug stores and perfumeries. It was only in 1981
that a major department store began to sell a prestige cosmetics range,
that of Estée Lauder (Frost & Sullivan, 1983: 308-333).
In developing countries, Western firms were often obliged to
make great adaptations to their formulations. In India and many
other developing countries, import and exchange controls obliged
firms to use alternative, local ingredients. In Thailand, Unilever’s
Lux held one-half of the total bar soap market by the early 1980s,
but unlike in Europe or the United States, the product contained
no tallow, and instead used local palm oil (Jones, 2005b: 164). The
need to adapt also applied to the marketing side of the business. In
the early 1970s, for example, Unilever employed the advertizing
agency J. Walter Thompson to help it expand the market share for
Pepsodent in Kenya, then a mere 4 percent. Another Unilever
brand, Signal, held 10 percent, but both were dwarfed by Colgate’s
four-fifths market share. Unilever wanted to reach new toothpaste
users, rather than cannibalize its existing consumers, but careful
thought had to be given to the marketing campaign. While the
agency had run a campaign for the brand in Italy claiming
“Whiteness without scratching the teeth,” this could not be used as
attitude surveys indicated that Kenyans blamed (correctly)
yellowed teeth on the high levels of natural fluoride in their water.
The next campaign idea to claim that Pepsodent would deliver the
“big white smile of success” was abandoned when it was realized
that the concept of “success” was hard to explain in Swahili, the
 Globalization and Beauty 903

local language. After several more experiments, the agency settled

on a “Dangermouth” campaign, which claimed that Pepsodent
gave relief from the prospect of toothache. However, figuring out
the right campaign message remained as much as an art as a science
(Anonymous, n.d.e).

V. Spiky and Flat Worlds in the Second Global

Economy
The latest stage of globalization, which began during the 1980s,
has sometimes been called the second global economy (Jones, 2010b:
150-154). The most striking characteristic has been the re-integration
into the international economy of large parts of the world that had
opted out for many decades. The countries opting in included Russia
and China, formerly closed Communist economies, and many
developing countries, such as India and much of Latin America, that
had been so closed and protectionist that previously they had hardly
counted contributed to the international economy. The new wave of
economic integration, by most measures, reached and began to surpass
the pre-1914 high point of globalization, with the significant
exception of labor markets, which remained highly regulated by
national immigration controls.
The impact of the latest wave of globalization on the beauty
industry has had paradoxical effects. On the one hand, the beauty
industry underwent unprecedented globalization, including the
large-scale penetration of the U.S. market by foreign firms, the spread
of mega-brands, and the re-opening of China and Eastern Europe to
the global industry. Also, the impact of the globalization of celebrity
culture, and the diffusion of the aspirational appeal of New York and
Paris to a new generation of consumers in China, India, Russia and
elsewhere, has been striking. Certain beauty ideals, especially for
women, have become widely diffused worldwide, including wide-eyes,
paler skin, and thin bodies.
This has been an era of consolidation in the industry, in which
global giants have grown rapidly through acquisitions, and rolled out
904 EURAMERICA

brands rapidly. Much the same consolidation was evident in other

consumer products industries, such as alcoholic beverages (Lopes,
2007). In beauty, L’Oréal and Procter & Gamble were emblematic of
the scale of changes; during the 1980s both were primarily confined
to their home regions. Today, the two firms are the largest in the
industry, collectively selling a quarter of the world’s beauty products.
In the 1980s, L’Oréal was still primarily a European company,
with a small business in the United States, and none at all in Asia.
Over the following decade, the firm bought leading U.S. brands such
as Redken, Maybelline and Soft-Sheen Carson, and subsequently
acquired Japanese brands such as Shu Uemura and British brands such
as The Body Shop. It opened businesses in Russia and then China,
introducing its French and recently acquired U.S. brands into them. In
the mid-1990s, 63 percent of the company’s business was still in
Western Europe, and 20 percent in North America. A decade later,
thanks to rapid growth in new markets, the percentage of sales
concentrated in Western Europe had fallen to 46 percent, and North
America had risen to 27 percent.
In the case of Procter & Gamble, it had only a modest shampoo
and bar soap business, concentrated mainly in rich countries, in the
1980s. Thereafter, acquisitions of brands such as Max Factor, Clairol,
Wella and Gillette gave the firm a huge global presence. During the
decade stretching from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, the U.S. firm
became the world’s largest hair care and men’s grooming products
company, the second largest in oral hygiene, and the third largest in
color cosmetics and bath and hygiene (Jones, 2010a: 302-308).
These two firms, and others, responded to the opening of Russia,
China and other countries with a surge of globalization was
exemplified by the rapid geographical diffusion of “mega brands” such
as L’Oréal Paris, Pantene, Nivea and Dove. The beauty companies,
along with many other consumer products companies in this era,
sought to pare down their brand portfolios to what they considered
“core” brands, which enjoyed large sales and could be expanded
across markets and to different cosmetic and personal care product
categories. The pace of the worldwide roll-out of brands was
 Globalization and Beauty 905

unprecedented. When L’Oréal acquired Maybelline in 1996, the

brand only had seven percent of its sales outside America, and the
company was based in Tennessee. L’Oréal rapidly moved the company
to New York, transformed its products through the application of its
own technologies and people, and rebranded it as Maybelline New
York. The Maybelline New York brand was the launched in 80
additional countries within five years. A disciplined global brand
image of American modernity—urban, relaxed and hip—was enforced,
even though the make-up was formulaically adapted to skin types and
weather across the globe. The fast roll-out of the brand was achieved
partly by buying prominent local brands, such as Miss Ylang in
Argentina in 2000 and Colorama in Brazil in 2001, which were
integrated into Maybelline (Jones, 2010a: 308; Jones, Kiron, Dessain,
& Sjöman, 2006).
The merger of such prominent local brands into global
behemoths would appear to provide compelling evidence of the
further erosion of the particular local by the homogenized global.
However there were other political, social and cultural trends during
these decades which worked in different directions. During the 1960s
and 1970s, the Civil Rights movement in the United States and
decolonization in Asia and Africa defenestrated a world in which
white and Western were automatically assumed to be superior. As
Western societies grew more ethnically diverse, and as the rights of
minorities were recognized and in rare cases celebrated, any imagined
world of blond and blue-eyed white beauty has given way to
multi-ethnic beauty ideals. In the United States, the narrative of the
melting pot gave way to the image of the mosaic.
The rapid economic growth of China and India, especially, but
also some other emerging markets, also raised awareness of both and
the status of non-Western cultures and physical types. The impact is
evident in the increasing worldwide popularity of Bollywood and
other non-Western cinemas and the spread of “ethnic” cuisines
(Kavoori & Punathambekar, 2008). It can also be seen in the
increasing popularity of fashions originating beyond the West, as seen,
for example, in the growth of a high-end fashion-industry in India
906 EURAMERICA

from the mid-1980s (Khaire, 2011). In beauty, this trend has

stimulated a re-assertion of local traditions, and a new confidence that
Asians or Africans are just as beautiful as anyone else.
While the spread of mega brands might be seen as driving the
further homogenization of beauty ideals, in fact, the outcome was
often more nuanced. While the core claims, and usually the core
technologies, of such global brands were the same worldwide,
companies paid evermore regard to ensuring that the form in which
such claims and technologies was delivered, whether in jars or creams,
and the scents employed, were relevant to consumers in each market.
Global marketing campaigns increasingly incorporated considerations
of cultural and ethnic differences in markets. Mass consumer brands had
long tended to contain a substantial degree of local content in their
presentations, but now even while prestige brands reflected the trend.
A significant example may be drawn from the strong
preference for skin whitening products in Asia. During the postwar
decades, Japan, among other countries, emulated the Western
preferences for suntanning, but this fashion declined steeply
towards the end of the century. In its stead, there was a reversion
to traditional preferences for very pale skins, and the products
which promised to deliver such skin tones. Shiseido launched a
successful Whitess essence cream in 1989, and many Western
companies such as Chanel, Christian Dior and Yves Saint-Laurent
also sold whitening cosmetics for the Japanese market by the
middle of the 1990s (Ashikari, 2005).
Western firms drew on their expertise with Japanese lightening
creams as the Chinese market opened, hoping to cash in on a similar
historical preference for fair skin. Lancôme, for one, rapidly
established itself as the leading prestige brand in China after its launch
in 1999, primarily thanks to its skin-lightening products. Although
globally Lancôme sought to maintain a consistent brand image, the
historical development of the brand meant that it needed to
communicate its values in different ways in different regions. By the
first decade of the new century, two-thirds of the brand’s sales in Asia
were skin care products, but in the United States half its sales were
 Globalization and Beauty 907

make-up and most of the remainder skin care products. In Europe,

sales were more evenly balanced between skin, make-up and fragrance.
While in the United States the brand heavily emphasized efficacy in
fighting things like wrinkles; in Europe marketing carried more
emotional images about skin; while in Asia the brand emphasized its
impact on the purity and lightness of skin (Jones, 2010a: 324).
The Lancôme story played out in China, as well as other East
Asian markets. Western and Japanese brands retained enormous
aspirational value compared with the local Chinese brands they had
secured after entering the country during the 1980s, but consumer
demand for more local content also grew stronger, and resulted in the
inclusion of more local models in advertisements. Still, luxury brands
as a whole remained wary of giving too much ground to localization,
and cautious about using local models, but a search for local relevance
has also been apparent in recent years. In China, as well as Japan,
South Korea, and Taiwan, prestige advertisements in beauty
magazines began to appear in the form of a Western global
spokes-model in the front of a magazine, but with three to six pages of
local models near the end. There was also a demand for more local
ingredients, and while Chinese consumers embraced the aspirational
values of leading American and French beauty brands, they also
sought out Western shampoos including such familiar, local
ingredients as ginseng (Jones 2010a: 326).
Globalization came to serve as a diffuser of non-Western beauty
norms. A case in point was Unilever’s highly successful skin whitener,
Fair and Lovely, launched in India in the 1970s (Jones, 2010a: 174).
The brand was so successful that it held well over half of India’s $200
million skin lightening market in the first decade of the new century.
Unilever also began to globalize, or at least regionalize, the brand. It
was launched in Sri Lanka in 1992, and then in nearly forty countries
in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East over the following
two decades. Unilever, a leading Western consumer products company,
is now globalizing a non-Western vision of beauty. There are major
issues of legitimacy here: the brand’s association of fairness with
female beauty, a long-established tradition in India which predates the
908 EURAMERICA

British colonial era, and claims that its use enables women to find a
better husband or better employment, would do more than raise
eyebrows if it was sold in the United States or Europe. In India itself
there is substantial criticism that such advertizing was both racist and
demeaning to women, as well as to men who were increasingly also
buying such creams (Johnson, 2007; Kazmin & Lucas, 2011).
Nevertheless the brand can be seen as part of a wider trend of the
globalization, or regionalization, of brands which has proved a strong
trend over the last two decades (Cayla & Eckhardt, 2008).
The rediscovery of local ideals and ingredients previously swept
away by the era of industrialization—or at least a re-imagination of
such local traditions—also provided new opportunities for local firms
in an industry in which American and Western European firms had so
long dominated. Korres, a Greek firm which grew from a single
Athens pharmacy in the 1990s, making natural products using
traditional knowledge of herbs and flora in the country, has expanded
rapidly throughout Europe and the United States over the last decade.
In Brazil, now the world’s third largest beauty market, locally-owned
Natura, has sales of over $1 billion and is market leader in the country.
This 40-year old direct sales company, pursues a remarkable social
and environmental agenda, which includes sourcing ingredients from
indigenous peoples in the Amazon. One of its founders even ran as the
Vice-Presidential candidate for the Green Party in the recent Brazilian
election. It has, in recent years, also opened businesses elsewhere in
Latin America, and even in France, the capital of beauty.
In China, local firms such as Shanghai Jahwa are building brands
using past traditions. This firm has its origins in 1898, and its first
brand, Shanghai Vive (Two Girls) excelled in a market otherwise
dominated by foreign products. The company fell on hard times
during the era of Mao Zedong, when it was reduced to making
household cleaning products, but in recent years it has flourished
again in beauty. The Herborlist brand, launched a decade ago, builds
on the traditional Chinese herbal ingredients used in Chinese medicine
to enhance the condition of the skin. More recently the Shanghai Vive
brand has been revived; it’s packaging and marketing drawing heavily
 Globalization and Beauty 909

on images of style and opulence in old Shanghai. Shanghai Jahwa, like

Natura, sells its products in France, and has expressed global
ambitions (Deighton, Kornfeld, He, & Jiang, 2010).
It remains to be seen how far the global ambitions of Brazilian
and Chinese firms will be realized. Japanese companies such as
Shiseido and Kao have pursued global markets since the 1960s, if not
earlier, only to find Western consumers skeptical, and have
increasingly reverted to a focus on their regional market, where their
brands find acceptance with consumers. South Korean firms such as
AmorePacific have repeated this story more recently (Jones, 2010a:
314-315). Moreover, Western firms are eager buyers of successful,
especially premium, brands in emerging markets, which they can use
both to grow businesses in those countries, and to respond to growing
Western consumer interest in non-Western beauty ideals. In China,
L’Oréal acquired Yue-Sai in 2004, Beiersdorf acquired C-Bons in
2008, Johnson & Johnson acquired Beijing Dabao in 2008, and Coty
acquired TJoy in 2010. In India, which has even fewer good quality
local brands than China, Estée Lauder acquired control of Forest
Essentials in 2008. In 2010 LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton
acquired a controlling majority stake in Sack’s, an online retailer of
fragrances and beauty products and one of the leading companies in
Brazil’s specialty beauty distribution channel.
While globalization in the past, then, led to a homogenization of
beauty ideals and practices, today there is a revival of local traditions,
real or imagined. Globalization is also enabling alternative visions of
beauty, whether Chinese or Brazilian, to be offered to consumers
worldwide, both by local firms and by Western firms anxious to offer
their consumers more choices. Whether, or if, Shanghai and Rio de
Janeiro become as globally relevant as beauty capitals as Paris and
New York, remains to be seen. However, it is evident that there is a
new pluralism in beauty markets worldwide. This is facilitated by the
breakdown of once rigid distribution channels, as specialty stores,
television shopping channels, and e-commerce offer consumers more
choices. The web and social networking has also empowered consumers
of beauty products to make choices compared to two decades ago.
910 EURAMERICA

They have far more knowledge, and more confidence in themselves,

and the power of corporate behemoths to dictate beauty standards has
waned. Brand managers today ignore bloggers at their peril.
Finally, a word of caution is needed. The revival of the local in
beauty looks strongest when the focus is on beauty products, where
local ingredients and local models resonate with consumers. The
enduring legacy of the past era of homogenization is much more
evident in the cosmetic surgery industry. In particular, East Asian
demand for double-eyelid and nose surgery, designed to make people
look more Western, which first appeared in Japan as early as 1896
(Sergile & Obata, 1997), shows no sign of abating. In South Korea,
this has driven the world’s highest rates of cosmetic plastic surgery,
followed at some distance by Taiwan and Japan. Even if such high
rates as those seen in South Korea were driven by local social
pressures for conformity, the end-result has been the Westernization
of female (and some male) facial ideals (Kim, 2003).

VI. Conclusion
This article has explored the impact of globalization on
worldwide beauty ideals and practices. As the world globalized, there
was an unmistakable homogenization of beauty ideals and practices
around the world. In the age of imperialism, Western and white
beauty standards emerged as global ideals. This was historically
contingent on the unique circumstances prevailing at that time, but
once the ideals were in place, the strategies of business enterprises
helped reinforce it. As the beauty companies built international
markets through exporting and foreign direct investment, they
diffused perceptions of beauty and not simply skin creams and
lipsticks. Firms turned societal and cultural ideals into aspirational
brands, artfully taking norms around the world, in part through using
their marketing skills to make them appear locally relevant. The
momentum behind this standard was reinforced by the impact of
Hollywood and other drivers of an international consumer culture,
 Globalization and Beauty 911

despite the spectacular breakdown of the first global economy due to

world wars, the Great Depression, and the spread of nationalistic
regimes. Beauty companies formed an important component of a
wider business eco-system, which including movie studios, pageant
organizers, and fashion magazines.
Yet the process of homogenization, powerful as it was, was never
complete. The local was never entirely subsumed by the homogenized
global. Convergence and homogenization were stronger in aspirations
than in preferences for particular products or scents, which remained
more persistently local, despite the spread of global brand names.
Moreover, the multinational firm was never monolithic, in beauty or
any other industry, while fundamental cultural and social values and
preferences proved deeply ingrained.
The more recent era of globalization—that since the 1980s—has
coincided with a strong revival in interest in local traditions and
practices, which is particularly noticeable in some of the fastest
growing emerging markets, such as China. Certainly, as trends in
cosmetic surgery illustrate, the legacy of the first wave of globalization
and its emphasis on the Western beauty ideal, persists. But the leading
firms in the beauty industry certainly now find themselves struggling
with the challenge of how to respond to consumers who require
increasingly nuanced mixtures of the global and the local in the brands
they buy. The strong market positions of a number of very large
companies mean that we are seeing to some extent an “orchestrated”
diversity, but the current fragmentation of distribution channels, the
empowerment of consumers through the web, and the rise of new
entrants, has also set constraints on the ability of large corporations to
orchestrate. If Henry Kissinger was right that globalization in the past
was another name for Americanization, or at least Westernization, this
is not the case now. In beauty, as in many other things, globalization is
no longer a one-way street. Beauty is at the epicenter of the
contradictions in today’s world, which is simultaneously growing
evermore flat, and evermore spiky, as the local re-asserts itself, and
the wealth of countries and regions beyond the West grows.
912 EURAMERICA

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全球化與美：史學與企業研究的視野

傑弗瑞‧瓊斯
Harvard Business School, Harvard University
Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163, USA
E-mail: gjones@hbs.edu
(曾瑞鈴譯)

摘 要

本文以美麗產業為例，探討全球化長久以來的影響。當近代第
一波的全球化在十九世紀開展之後，全球對於美的觀念開始邁向同
質化的趨勢，此趨勢多少延續至今，並對社會及文化帶來巨變，而
企業也在這過程中扮演極為重要的核心角色。本研究探討企業家與
企業如何將社會價值轉化成品牌，並將其推展至世界各地，最後進
而改變整個社會對美的認知。本文也揭示，儘管在全球化最激烈的
時刻，由企業所推動之全球同質化的成效相當有限，最後本文提出
有力論據，證明全球化浪潮再次有助於當代美感觀念的更多元化發
展。

關鍵詞：美、全球化、文化

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